Eric Aarons

Eric Aarons (born 16 March 1919) is a member of the third of four generations of the Aarons family who played leading roles in the Communist Party of Australia (CPA). Although never a mass party like those in Italy, France or Indonesia, the CPA played many important roles in Australian political life, most notably in the Labour Movement – in which it had significant influence across a wide spectrum of trade unions – and in many social movements, anti-war and peace organisations and anti-racist activities.

Aarons played an important role in the party’s work from the mid-1940s to the winding up of the party in the early 1990s. He rose to be in charge of party education, to be a leading theorist and author, a powerful advocate for de-Stalinisation of the CPA and was one of three people who jointly replaced his older brother, Laurie Aarons, as CPA National Secretary in 1976.

Born in Marrickville in inner-city Sydney, Aarons moved with his parents and older brother, Laurie, to Melbourne as a young boy. Here he became close to his grandparents, Jane and Louis Aarons, Jewish immigrants from the United States and Britain who had earlier been active in both the Australian Labor Party (ALP) and the far more radical Victorian Socialist Party.

When the CPA was formed in 1920 – inspired by the Russian Revolution of 1917 – Jane and Louis became foundation members in Melbourne and were among the early Australian communists to visit the Soviet Union. Aarons' father, Sam, joined the CPA and became a prominent figure in the party’s local activities and in the mid-1930s travelled to Spain to volunteer for the International Brigade formed to assist the Spanish Republic resist Francisco Franco's ultimately successful uprising against the elected Popular Front Government.

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